A child at school in Lebanon. Researchers found donors are deterred from spending on pre-school learning because its benefits are less immediate.
Photograph: Hussein Baydoun/Theirworld

Just 1% of international aid dedicated to young children’s development is being targeted on pre-school education, according to a report that warns spending is imbalanced and short-sighted.

While global funding for early childhood development has grown in recent years, almost all of this investment – 95% – has been channelled towards health and nutrition initiatives. Donors are deterred from spending on pre-school education, the report says, because the benefits of doing so are less immediate and visible.

The Netherlands and the US, which are among the largest donors to early childhood development, give nothing to pre-primary education. The UK, also a key donor, spends less than 1%, according to the analysis by Cambridge University academics for the children’s charity Theirworld.

Professor Pauline Rose, director of the Real Centre, University of Cambridge, and one of the report’s authors, said international donors need to wake up. “Investment in the early years requires access to good quality pre-primary education as well as health and nutrition,” she said. “It is time to take a good look at the numbers and commit to urgent action. If [donors] don’t, millions of children will fail to reach their full potential.”

Globally, 43% of children aged five years or under are thought to be at risk of poor development as a result of poverty and stunted growth. This is equivalent to 250 million children.

In order to meet the early childhood development targets set out in the sustainable development goals, donors must take a holistic approach, said the report.

But the study found spending had become even more imbalanced, with the proportion of early childhood development aid spent on pre-school programmes falling, from 3% to 1% between 2002 and 2016. Only a small number of donors provide significant support to this area, making it vulnerable to cuts if leaders’ priorities change.

The analysis uses data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to compare spending on several key areas where resources can be tracked: health, nutrition, sanitation and pre-primary education. It focuses on spending aimed at children aged from birth to six years old.

The report says there is strong evidence to support the benefits of investing in pre-school education, and urges donors and governments to invest a minimum of 10% of their education budgets on pre-school initiatives. It cites one study conducted in Mozambique which found rural children who had attended pre-school were more likely to enrol in primary school. Children also had improved cognitive abilities and behaviours compared with their peers who had not enrolled.

“Benefits of investing in pre-primary education are found to be the greatest for the most disadvantaged, who are often the least prepared when starting primary school and are therefore most likely to be left behind,” said Sarah Brown, president of Theirworld. “But despite all the evidence, millions of children are continuing to miss out on the chance of a great start in life.”

Just 15% of five- to six-year-olds in low-income countries are enrolled in pre-primary education programmes, compared with 82% for children of the same age in high-income countries.

Campaigners have warned repeatedly that education projects are severely underfunded, and those for early years even more so. In February, at a global summit, world leaders promised to spend $2.3bn (£1.6bn) on education over the next three years, following warnings from the World Bank of a “global learning crisis”. But donor pledges fell short of the $3bn target given by the Global Partnership for Education.

Across the world, more than 260 million children are out of school, and half of those in school are not learning.